An official announcement Thursday afternoon stated that the university has selected three finalists for the position -- it did not give names -- and a new president will be selected by the end of August.

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The announcement went on to state that open forums would be scheduled for an undetermined point in the future for the university community to meet with the three candidates, whose names will be revealed around that time, according to a source within the university’s communications division.

“Each of the finalists will participate in an all campus forum for faculty, staff and students,” the official statement read. “After the campus visits are completed, the Board of Trustees will make the selection of the next Oakland University President from the set of three finalists before the end of August.”

The university has been grinding away at a national search for a new president for the past 10 months, having recruited the help of a Dallas-based firm, R. William Funk & Associates, to select candidates for the 12-member search committee’s perusal.

The committee’s recommendation for finalists will then be forwarded to the Oakland University Board of Trustees for consideration.

But what had faculty, staff and students concerned was the opaque nature of the process.

Oakland University Board of Trustees Chairman Michael Kramer sent a letter to faculty, staff and students June 2 detailing the presidential search process and the confidentiality inherent for candidates.

“Because of the candidates’ desire to maintain confidentiality, as all of the finalists are presently employed elsewhere, extensive open campus forums will not be part of the ongoing process,” the letter read.

“I am sure we can all agree that we do not want to eliminate an outstanding candidate who is perfectly happy in and does not want to risk his or her current position,” the letter continued. “The Board of Trustees will make the final selection of the next Oakland University President from the set of finalists presented by the search committee.”

That lack of transparency, given the board’s ability to make that final decision on its own, didn’t sit well with some.

“This is a public institution and I think that carries with it a different kind of spirit,” said Karen Miller, an associate professor in the history department. “There have been a lot of searches that have been going on in this country in the last year that have been far more transparent than this one. I would have preferred to have followed that model.

“I think that’s what the faculty wants: a sense that the president along with the vice president for academic affairs will have a vision that we can all understand that will make sense to us,” Miller said, “and make sense in connection with our capabilities so that we can all essentially march in the same direction instead of all being amorphously floating.”

She added that the apparent lack of transparency and then-uncertain lack of open forums for students and faculty to get to know the candidates might not bode well.

“We want somebody who understands what a university does,” she said. “We were not entirely convinced that President (Gary) Russi understood what we did on a day to day basis and understood what we needed and what was important … We would like an unambiguous emphasis on academics.”

Samantha Wolf, a student liaison for the Board of Trustees, said the lack of any kind of open forum would have been a distinct divergence from previous searches for candidates for other offices, such as the university provost.

“I know there’s confidentiality that needs to be taken but it’s important to keep the Oakland University community involved in the process,” she said.

Wolf held a seat on the search committee for a new university provost for the 2012-2013 academic year, adding that the process in that case welcomed involvement from students and faculty. The university held open forums as a way for candidates to familiarize themselves with the university community, she said.

“If nobody’s going to follow the president, the university’s not going to be successful,” she said. “One of the best ways to do that is to bring (candidates) on campus. There has to be an understanding from all areas that the Oakland University community should be accepting that it is a confidential issue but there should be some questioning about how the process is going.”

The Oakland Press reached out to R. William Funk & Associates and Michael Kramer for comment but did not receive a response at the time of this report.

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Andrew is an online coordinator, multimedia journalist and editorial page contact for The Oakland Press who has been with Digital First Media since 2012. Reach the author at andrew.kidd@oakpress.com
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